MarkO raves about a documentary focusing on a high school in Indiana. American Teen tells the stories of "the school queen bee, the top jock, the dreamboat guy, a unnoticed geek, and an artsy girl who doesn’t fit in." Yes, it sounds like the Breakfast Club in a very White America. And it sounds wonderful. Can't wait to see it.

Oh, and there's these Muppet movie posters (there were a lot of good ones, but I thought these were five of the most iconic. What do you think?):

Though the movie poster (while definitely not the movie itself) is an instant classic, the riff on it here seems timeless.

7 comments:

Jas,I love your stuff, and I think you and I may have much in common. I responded to your reply on stayc's blog, and would love to keep this dialogue going. I am curious about a few things though, for example, how can you site John Piper as someone you categorize as your "favorite", yet have such a humanstic understanding of the Gospel. "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him", does not ooze with poverty being the greatest "social injustice", or even a "central beef". The fact that a "cure" to poverty is more violently sought after than the glory of Christ should be your "central beef", that is of course if Piper is your "favorite". Please, lets keep this going. I pray that my tone does not come out as condensending, but rather as graciously polemical. Take care Jas, I hope that we can sharpen each others sword.

thanks for the blog-love, man. always flattering to hear that (even when i haven't posted anything in a week).

as i stated in reply to your reply to my reply, yes, let's keep the dialog going. my only concern is that you not turn the "gracious polemic(s)" into needless and senseless attacks (on either side) against each other.

since you raise up a lot of questions in your responses, and since i've got some reading and writing to do tonight, i'll try to answer your questions piece by piece.

per my professed love of John Piper, let me first say that this blog (and much of the profile data therein) was created about four years ago. and though i would credit Piper for opening my eyes on a lot of things, i would not say that he is at the center of my theological worldview right now, but rather a part of it.

in other words, my theology, worldview and hopefully my practices are informed by what uber-blogger / North Park professor / author Scot McKnight has called the Jesus Creed. you know it: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. And the second one is like unto it, Love your neighbor as yourself." these two dynamics (love of God, love of others) should be part of a seamless whole - a garment woven together as it were. for who can say that they love God whom they have not seen and yet not love their neighbor, whom they do see?

sadly, i see the great divide in Modernist Christianity (which, thankfully, is coming to an end) of taking one side over another. you mention the evils of the social gospel. if all the gospel that we have to preach is about feeding the belly, than it is wrong and futile. but i'm also wary of the pie-in-the-sky / let's-just-wait-for-heaven version (dualistic and very greek) of Christianity which ignores the present and the bodily (which, the Bible reminds us, will rise again) to just focus on the afterlife.

no, rather we need to meld these traditions into one piece- love God, love your neighbor. to practice acts of love (say, feeding the poor) with the sole intent of telling them that they need Jesus, however, is not to truly love them. not that i'm a great lover, but, i know my struggles in this area, and God is gracious. very, very gracious.

jas,Sounds great. On Stayc' blog you mentioned ad hominem attacks...when did I attack you personally? Let's put aside this idea that you can love your neighbor by feeding both body and soul, the issue I am more concerned with is why and how you feel justified in using a secular government as the vehicle for this mission? That is not in the Bible or the Constitution. You want to feed the poor, fine, but not at the cost of promoting Socialism.

By the way, Cubs Fan? I am a huge Cubbies guy, all the way back since 1984.

i'm more of an idealist in the Cubs/Sox paradigm. meaning, i'd like to put the two sides together and end the antagonism... different post for a different day, though. are you in chicago? you should come to my church.

i feel that calling me ignorant is disrespectful and an attack on my character. that's what i meant by that.

my argument is not that government to do the job of the church, but that the church should use all weapons at our disposal to make sure people are taken care of. if a vote is a act of love, than so be it. i just think that the best use of political power right now is to support barrack obama.

as per your base attack (that of communism/marxism and the redistribution of wealth/property) well, i'll get to that later. i'll just say that i think your notions of what constitutes liberalism/progressivism are extremely antiquated and recidivist.

It is a scary day when identifying one as ignorant is an insult, but the fact is it hurt your feelings and I sincerely apologize. Are you a pastor? No I am not in Chicago, Orange County CA to be more precise. God bless WGN, the conduit for my Cubs fanatacism.

I am not quite sure how I am antiquated in my understanding of the Democratic base. Besides my personal relationships, I am visiting blogs such as yours and stayc' and kos often. Then when you consider the fact that I despise the GOP, the war in Iraq, I think I am even better prepared to sit back and understand the pulse of the left and the right. "Extremely antiquated", well had I not already been warned I would call that statement ignorant, in that you are "without knowledge" as to the breadth and depth of my understanding the current state of the Democratic Party, Leftist thinking, Socialism, Marxism, Communism, and The Communist Manifesto. These are all distinct and need to be treated differently as not all Dems are Socialists and so and so forth, but on what grounds can you call my notions "extremely antiquated"?

it's one thing to call out a statement or a claim by someone as being ignorant. it's also something perhaps valid to call a person out as being ignorant of an issue or even a lifetime of ignorance. however, those statements need to stand up and the person being accused should at least have a proven track-record of ignorance.

i have spent my life in the church and a sizeable percentage of it studying the bible and it's applications to modern-day life (as well as its interpretation throughout history, politics, etc.). and, much as you, i bridge a lot of different worlds, which i may get into later. as to my conservative track record, the church i grew up in was on the conservative end of evangelical and i dabbled in separatist fundamentalism. i supported Bush in '00 and somewhat more reluctantly in '04. i spent my teenage years on welfare and see many of my students grow up under the soul-crushing auspices of government so-called "aid".

of course i'm getting off-task here but i just want to head-off the charge of ignorance in terms of conservative Christian theology and politics. as to the charge i have leveled against you, it's largely due to the fact that you keep making the charge against Obama and his supporters that we favor a soviet-style redistribution of wealth. this goes against everything that i hear from obama (who favors opening new job sectors in the environment field, for example, with the knowledge that our current service-industry led economy cannot last) and his camp.

but you've brought up charges on your own blog that, for instance, obama is socialist-friendly because he has the Decemberists on his side and they play the national anthem of the soviet republic must mean that they are commies and so - by association - is obama.

i think that that type of thinking is antiquated. and i'm sorry if i made the charge that you are. you certainly aren't. i'm just trying to reconcile how you can make that logical jump that i thought most of us left behind in the 50's (myself excluded, since it was only within the last dozen or so years that i came out of fundamentalism :D )